Spend a Week at SIGGRAPH is a program for high school students aged 16 or over.

The goal of the program is to give a group of local area high school students a full week's exposure to the best of computer graphics and interactive techniques. The Pioneers will provide one or two mentors who will work with the student before, during, and after the show.

What a Student Receives

Each Spend a Week at SIGGRAPH student will receive full conference registration and a $300 stipend. Each student needs to be in the local area. There is no need for the student to be directly involved in technology. It's fine to not know exactly what you want to do. Teachers will help in the selection process, so you need to have at least a C GPA. And it's fine for a teacher or parent to accompany you to the conference.

So, what if you're interested and not from the local area? Any student who is 16 or over can register as a student though the SIGGRAPH Conference website. If you're over 18, you can have expenses covered by working as a student volunteer. In either case, we'd be happy to introduce you to a Pioneer/mentor. Please contact the Chief Student Mentor to make it happen.

How Can a Student Be Selected

This is really pretty easy. A parent, teacher, or student must contact the local student recruiter for each conference. The student recruiter will build the list for the Pioneers to support. Our current limit for bringing subsidized students to the conference is 20.

Expectations for Selected Students

You need to commit to:

• Attend a full sampling of SIGGRAPH events.
• Use your mentor to learn more about the conference and the history and direction of computer graphics.
• Write a one to two page summary of your experience and how it's impacted you. You'll send your summary to your mentor. The summary must be received for us to send your stipend.

Sponsors

The Computer Graphics Pioneers and ACM SIGGRAPH thank their sponsors for their generous past support of the Pioneers High School Mentoring Program:

• Adobe Systems, Inc.
• Jon Peddie Research
• Usability Architects, Inc.

How to Be a Mentor

This plum job falls to the Chief Student Mentor. If you find out about the mentoring program through this web site, please send him an email. We'll also send out e-mail recruiting flyers in the March-April time frame.

Expectations for Selected Mentors

You need to:

• Physically be at the conference.
• Share your e-mail address with your student(s) before and after the conference.
• Meet with the student on a mutually arranged schedule during the conference.
• Receive the student summary and send it to the Chief Student Mentor with your remarks about your experience.

Expectations for the Chief

It's the Chief's job to:

• Collect all Pioneers interested in being mentors
• Work with the student recruiter to make assignments.
• Receive and collect the student summary.
• Make good on the promised stipend.

Letters

The program has run for five years now. Letters from the previous years are at the links below.